gambit3
And I am AWESOME  
Posts 158
Registered 5-4-2002 Member Is Offline Mood: Go Spurs Go!
|
| posted on 3-17-2015 at 04:02 PM |
|
|
Anyone know the backstory behind this?
If it's not meant to be public, I understand.
from the 3/16/2015 RAW recap:
Next Week: RAW will have not one, but TWO special guests. One is Snoop Dogg.... but the other is Bill Simmons. Which makes me simultaneously very
happy and very sad. Happy because for many years, Simmons proclaimed me as his favorite internet wrestling writer guy and fame and fortune could not
have happened to a man with better taste. Sad because it means that if one of my disciples is getting into the inner sanctum, then that means I was
THIS CLOSE to getting there myself. But noooooooooo.... when I had the chance, I had to be all stubborn and idealistic and got my site personally
blacklisted by Stephanie herself, instead of just learning how to play the game a little bit.
I think I did the entire last 10 years wrong, goddammit.
Oh Gen-Y, where to begin. You are all beautiful, special little snowflakes, and no one can tell you differently. You are spoiled little brats. Things
have been so good for you for so long, you are not going to have any idea how to deal when things turn to shit, and mommy and daddy can't bail
you out. And it's coming. I know, I know, I am a mean person, a "hater", for not presenting life as anything but rosy. Don't worry, you
are all special, beautiful little snowflakes, and I want to kiss you all on your precious little heads. All I ask is that you don't cry to me
when your H3 is repo'd when things go to hell.
==================================
09:14 PM - "WWE is stupid, but they are not THIS stupid. [...] There will be a twist."
09:35 PM - "THERE WILL BE A TWIST~!"
09:40 PM - [ROYAL RUMBLE ENDS]
09:42 PM - "OK, there was not a twist. WWE really is that stupid."
--The Rick, while watching the 2015 Royal Rumble.
|
|
|
CCharger
The Great One 
Posts 3630
Registered 7-21-2010 Member Is Offline Mood: Covfefe
|
| posted on 3-17-2015 at 04:43 PM |
|
|
I'll take a shot.
Simmons runs Grantland which is like the largest sports writing website in the world. It's Simmons' baby and it is financed by ESPN. Being
selected to be a full time writer for them is like making the main roster for WWE after slumming it on the indies for 15 years. David Shoemaker, aka
The Masked Man, is the pro wrestling writer for Grantland. Shoemaker was a protege of Rick's and counts Rick as a friend and mentor. Basically,
the student (Shoemaker) is living his dream getting paid to write about wrestling while the teacher (Rick) writes RAW Recaps for free. Probably a
mixture of pride and regret on Rick's part.
I don't know what Rick means about having his website "blackballed by Stephanie" and "not playing the game". Perhaps someone who has been
posting here longer than me can fill in that blank.
"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."
"The powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned."
--- Stephen Miller, Trump senior White House advisor, Feb. 12, 2017
|
|
|
gambit3
And I am AWESOME
Posts 158
Registered 5-4-2002 Member Is Offline Mood: Go Spurs Go!
|
| posted on 3-17-2015 at 05:47 PM |
|
|
That clears up quite a few things. Thanks.
Oh Gen-Y, where to begin. You are all beautiful, special little snowflakes, and no one can tell you differently. You are spoiled little brats. Things
have been so good for you for so long, you are not going to have any idea how to deal when things turn to shit, and mommy and daddy can't bail
you out. And it's coming. I know, I know, I am a mean person, a "hater", for not presenting life as anything but rosy. Don't worry, you
are all special, beautiful little snowflakes, and I want to kiss you all on your precious little heads. All I ask is that you don't cry to me
when your H3 is repo'd when things go to hell.
==================================
09:14 PM - "WWE is stupid, but they are not THIS stupid. [...] There will be a twist."
09:35 PM - "THERE WILL BE A TWIST~!"
09:40 PM - [ROYAL RUMBLE ENDS]
09:42 PM - "OK, there was not a twist. WWE really is that stupid."
--The Rick, while watching the 2015 Royal Rumble.
|
|
|
OORick
The Sky is a Neighborhood 
Posts 3707
Registered 12-27-2001 Location - The Birthplace of Aviation Member Is Offline Mood: Armstrong'd~!
|
| posted on 3-22-2015 at 01:58 AM |
|
|
To fill in the few remaining blanks: back in the day when I was writing for CBS Sportsline, and Bill was just "The Boston Sports Guy" on the
Globe's website, we'd plug each other's stuff (usually in the guise of me being the Yankees' fan and him being the Sawx fan,
but at the end of the day, it was because we liked each other's work). As recently as a few years ago, anytime people would ask him about his
interest in wrestling, he'd make sure to work in a plug for his good ol' pal, The Rick.
As to me "doing it the wrong way," Simmons kept getting bigger by moving up the foodchain to ESPN. When Sportsline got out of wrestling, I was
deadset on not just selling content by the word to somebody else; I thought there was more value in being a brand than on being some guy making $300
per column, and then not actually owning that column anymore. Meantime, Simmons is just "some guy" selling content to ESPN, and let's just say
it worked out for him, since his content is better than theirs (to the point where he did become a brand-within-the-brand), and I'm left sitting
back, wishing I could go back and just be "some guy" because being a brand turned out to be a pretty stupid idea for me.
The thing about Stephanie is also 100% true. After I started OO as its own thing, I was getting several hundred hits per week from wwe.com addresses
(and I had a good idea who a lot of them were), then there was a news story (I'm gonna say mid-2004-ish) where Stephanie went full-on spaz
against the dirt sheets, and blocked a half dozen or so of the ones she was most upset with. OO was one of them, as witnessed by the hits from wwe.com
suddenly decreasing to zero. Which again plays into the idea that any chance I would have ever had to be accepted as "media" by WWE was long since
destroyed by my desire to be honest and forthright (and stubborn) in my presentation.
Oh well... while I can definitely admit I'd do things differently, in retrospect, it's also not like I lose sleep over it, because I also
don't think there's any sane way to assume a few different actions would have resulted in significantly different results. Even if I did
everything right, I'm not sure how OO would ever be anything other than a side hobby (with the understanding that doing things "right" means
never turning into an embarrassing cash-grab where you either have to subscribe or click on 30 different useless tweet-length micropages just to get
the news of the day).
Rick
|
|
|
gambit3
And I am AWESOME
Posts 158
Registered 5-4-2002 Member Is Offline Mood: Go Spurs Go!
|
| posted on 3-23-2015 at 07:33 PM |
|
|
Thanks for filling in the blanks. I never knew you had a history with Bill Simmons.
Oh Gen-Y, where to begin. You are all beautiful, special little snowflakes, and no one can tell you differently. You are spoiled little brats. Things
have been so good for you for so long, you are not going to have any idea how to deal when things turn to shit, and mommy and daddy can't bail
you out. And it's coming. I know, I know, I am a mean person, a "hater", for not presenting life as anything but rosy. Don't worry, you
are all special, beautiful little snowflakes, and I want to kiss you all on your precious little heads. All I ask is that you don't cry to me
when your H3 is repo'd when things go to hell.
==================================
09:14 PM - "WWE is stupid, but they are not THIS stupid. [...] There will be a twist."
09:35 PM - "THERE WILL BE A TWIST~!"
09:40 PM - [ROYAL RUMBLE ENDS]
09:42 PM - "OK, there was not a twist. WWE really is that stupid."
--The Rick, while watching the 2015 Royal Rumble.
|
|
|
|
